Olympics | Day 1: Off to a stunning start

Sunday

Jul 29, 2012 at 12:01 AMJul 29, 2012 at 8:34 AM

LONDON - Ryan Lochte strolled the deck of the Olympic Aquatics Centre wearing diamonds in his mouth and lime-green sneakers on the feet that powered him through the water faster than anyone else. Beaming, he chomped playfully on his gold medal while Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA blared throughout the massive arena.

LONDON — Ryan Lochte strolled the deck of the Olympic Aquatics Centre wearing diamonds in his mouth and lime-green sneakers on the feet that powered him through the water faster than anyone else. Beaming, he chomped playfully on his gold medal while Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA blared throughout the massive arena.

Michael Phelps?

He was nowhere to be found.

Not during the race.

Not when it came time to hand out the medals.

On a stunner of an opening night at the pool in London, Phelps was routed by his American rival in the 400-meter individual medley, losing to Lochte by more than four seconds yesterday. That’s not all: The winningest Olympian didn’t win any medal, the first time that has happened in a race of this magnitude since he was a 15-year-old kid competing in just one event at the Sydney Games, a dozen years ago.

“It was horrible,” Phelps told coach Bob Bowman when he climbed out.

Bowman’s reply: “It was.”

Lochte turned the much-anticipated duel with Phelps into a blowout, raising serious questions about whether the guy who has won 14 gold medals and 16 medals overall has anything left in the tank for his Olympic farewell.

Phelps is planning to retire after the last of his seven races in London, but he looked ready to call it a career while struggling to pull himself from the water when his first event was done.

He was spent.

He was thoroughly beaten, perhaps signaling a changing of the guard at the pool.

“This is my year,” said Lochte, who popped in his grillz — diamond-studded mouth jewelry — for the victory ceremony. “I know it and I feel it, because I’ve put in hard work. I’ve trained my butt off for four years … and there’s no better way to start this Olympics off than getting gold.”

For Phelps, the start of these games couldn’t have been more out of character.

He barely qualified for the evening final, a performance that hinted at trouble ahead. Trouble indeed. Phelps struggled to a fourth-place finish, blown out by Lochte and beaten by Brazil’s Thiago Pereira and Japan’s Kosuke Hagino.

“It was just a crappy race,” Phelps said. “I felt fine the first 200; then, I don’t know. They just swam a better race than me, a smarter race than me, and were better prepared than me. That’s why they’re on the medal stand.”

Lochte took the gold with a time of 4 minutes, 5.18 seconds. Pereira (4:08.86) and Hagino (4:08.94) were well back but ahead of Phelps, who touched in 4:09.28 — nearly 51/2 seconds off his world record from the Beijing Olympics and not nearly as fast as he went during the U.S. trials last month.

Since finishing fifth in his lone event at Sydney, the 200 butterfly, Phelps was 16 of 16 when it came to winning medals at the Olympics — 14 golds and two bronzes. That run is over.

Lochte climbed out of the pool with a big smile, waving to the crowd and looking about as fresh as he did at the start. He had predicted that this would be his year, and for the first race of the Olympics at least, he was on the mark.

“I think I’m kind of in shock right now,” he said. As for Phelps, “I know he gave it everything he had. That’s all you can ask for.”

Phelps was trying to become the first male swimmer to win the same individual event at three straight Olympics. He will have three more chances at a three-peat before he’s done in London, having also won the 200 individual medley, plus the 100 and 200 butterfly, at Athens and Beijing.

“I’m surprised, and not pleasantly,” Bowman said. “I expected he’d be in the 4:06 range.”

Phelps fell behind from the start in the butterfly, his trademark stroke. From there, it was all Lochte, who stretched his margin in the backstroke and breaststroke, then cruised to the gold in the freestyle, a good three body lengths ahead of the rest of the field.

“It’s frustrating, that’s all I can say. It’s pretty upsetting,” Phelps said. “The biggest thing now is to try to look forward. I have a bunch of other races, and hopefully we can finish a lot better than how we started.”

His close call in the morning prelims put him in an already uncustomary position — swimming on the outside in the No. 8 lane. He only had one swimmer next to him and no idea what Lochte and the others in the middle of the pool were doing.

“I don’t think the lane had anything to do with it,” Phelps said. “I just couldn’t really put myself in a good spot for that race. It’s frustrating, for sure. … It’s just really frustrating to start off on a bad note like this.”